Why No Budget
It is time to set the record straight for why the budget was not passed on Friday, September 29, 2006. Mayor David Lanman has blamed "malcontent" citizens for stopping the process with their complaints that Lanman and City Administrator Florencio Sauceda broke multiple laws relating to budgets and tax increases. Then Lanman blamed two councilmembers that were not present at the special meeting on Friday. Sauceda has further inflamed the situation by blaming these same groups for his not delivering a promised pay raise to city employees. More on that hot-air promise later. The entire 2006-2007 financial foundation for the City of Marfa rested on a successful meeting on Friday the 29th. Here is a summary of the agenda for that meeting:
Wow! I have never seen such an important meeting. Every financial detail for the next year was delayed until the LAST POSSIBLE MINUTE and then shoved onto a single agenda on a rare Friday night meeting that was also Marfa's Homecoming. Remember, this was a special meeting so four of five councilmembers are required for a quorum. No backup date was possible; an all or nothing gamble. A very risky move for a council that has successfully met for less than two-thirds of its scheduled meetings.
Now, look at the agenda for the September 28th meeting the night before.
Huh? Is it just me or does the Thursday agenda look a little light in the flip flops? Thursday was a regular meeting that requires only three members and had a very high chance of quorum. With ALL the unfinished financial business, why was the city discussing chair rentals and zoning term limits? Why was council not spending every possible minute on finances? Why? Why? Why?
I was concerned about the looming crisis at the September 21st special meeting. I stood at the podium and gave council my opinion that they should meet every day during the last week of the year to make up for so many failed meetings over the last few months. I told them they should meet "Monday for 05-06 amendment, Tuesday for 06-07 budget, Wednesday for taxes, Thursday for the official budget hearing, and Friday for the tax vote." I had floated this idea with Lanman previously. He scoffed. Council ignored my advice on the 21st.
Here is my opinion about why everything was shoved to the last day and why Budget Officer Lanman did not want to discuss the situation during the regular Thursday meeting. He wanted to load-up the Friday meeting agenda and then use the busy schedule as a reason to limit citizen participation. Then he wanted to use the looming deadline as a way to stop council from giving the matter serious consideration. If council did not push everything through, it would reflect poorly on council. It was a strategic gamble to get every crooked financial deal he wanted. Wait to the last minute, stop citizen input, and limit council power. This is the corruption of David and Flo in manipulating council so that they cannot do an effective job at leading the city. The desire to go to the Homecoming game in a small West Texas town on Friday night probably never crossed their minds.
Look at their incompetence. They could have taken care of so much on Thursday. They could have discussed the 06-07 budget. We all knew it was not ready. Council had only discussed it once. The public hearing was silly. Council did not discuss anything, they just let some citizens present petitions with little comment. They did not go through the budget line by line. Then, and this is the best part, at the end of the public hearing they did EXACTLY NOTHING! State law requires them to act on the budget at the end of the hearing. Flawed as it was, all they needed was a motion, a second and a vote and they could have adopted the budget for next year. They sat flat on their chairs and stared off into space and closed the hearing with no action (which is against the law I will remind you).
With all the other important financial matters ahead of them, what was next on the agenda? CHAIR RENTAL RATES!!!!!! That's right. Who makes the agenda? David and Flo. Those two dim bulbs thought that the most important fiscal matter for council to consider on Thursday was CHAIR RENTAL RATES! They could have worked on the 05-06 budget amendment. They could have worked on the 06-07 budget in earnest. They could have handled the MISD tax collection, investment analysis and bank loan business. They had time, they had quorum. Instead, they rearranged the folding metal chairs on the Marfa Fiscal Titanic.
Flo had the nerve to tell Marfa that the 06-07 budget had a surplus large enough to pay for raises for everybody with him getting the largest raise. He did not tell us that he was counting on $26,000 from Operation Stone Garden and $46,000 from the gas company that he knew we will not get this year. He used that empty promise of a pay raise to try and bribe everyone into accepting his budget mess. Excuse me, if the city is so flush with cash, why are we borrowing $115,000 from the bank? We don't need empty promises backed up by borrowed money. We need competent management of the city. Then when the house of cards fell apart, those two start blaming others for employees not getting a raise. Pathetic.
Marfa is in a boom. Why are employees suffering? The elected officials and the city administrator have failed to lead and manage the city effectively. Council must take part of the blame. The administrator works for them. Council is the boss. Council can and should manage this employee. Unfortunately, Lanman and Sauceda have joined forces to take as much power from Council as possible. Council has been passive, too timid to stand up to the Mayor's power grab and too intimidated to rein in their rogue administrator. Why did Lanman and Sauceda not raise the issue of absent councilwoman Devine? Because Lanman likes a weak council and likes to cast the tie-breaking vote. And Sauceda likes $15,000 raises authorized by Lanman without Council approval.
Council is to blame for being so completely and totally passive about the agenda that they are being led like sheep by two wolves in sheep's clothing. They should take leadership on the agenda. The real maliciousness comes from David and Flo who control council by limiting the agenda. We saw it in spades during the building permit fiasco. Those two twin brothers from different mothers have been controlling council by controlling the agenda. Council can only act on what is on the agenda, and those two know it. Our elected councilmembers cannot manage the city until they take control of the agenda. Until then, the democratic process has been shanghaied by Lanman and Sauceda, and our elected Council has been neutralized.
Action for the tax hike could have been scheduled for Thursday, but they chose the last minute showdown at OK Corral of Friday night. If they did not finish business on Thursday, they could have continued on Friday. David and Flo did not want proper consideration of the financial matters. They wanted to ram it down the throat of council and citizens at the last minute so there would not be time to consider it seriously. The Friday schedule for the tax vote was set weeks earlier due to Truth In Taxation laws. The Thursday agenda was posted three days ahead as usual. Why was there nothing of substance on Thursday? Why was everything pushed to Friday?
Look at the 05-06 budget amendment. Flo blew his admin budget by $48,000 last year. Then he purchased a police car for $17,500 without absolutely no budget. Completely and totally unfunded and illegal. Flo knows what he is doing. He has been around the fiscal mismanagement block many times in other failed management jobs. He knows he should have brought the 05-06 budget to council early in the year when he saw city spending out of control. Instead, he doctored the budget on paper and in the computer to hide things and then waited until the last hour of the year to try and bury his wasteful spending. He hoped council would be so distracted by the 06-07 budget and the bank bailout and the tax fiasco that he could just slide his whitewash of a whiteout of a budgetary fiasco when they weren't able to look at it carefully. Why did we spend $17,000 more than budgeted for professional services if Flo can't even get good advice. With David's full support, Flo wanted to whitewash his budget failures for 05-06 at the last minute. Instead of giving council time to work on it and understand the complexity, he waited until the last day on a busy agenda knowing they would not have time to look at it. This is not an accident people. This is intentional abuse of the system to deprive council of the ability to manage the city's finances properly. This is not competence. This is full-on intentional conniving with city money by two calculating men intent on running the city's books themselves while limiting the power of council.
David Lanman and Florencio P. Sauceda calculated that a last-minute, last hour, last-day, last ditch attempt to overwhelm council with all the financial structure of the year in one meeting would succeed by numbing council. Each of those agenda items should have been the centerpiece of a full meeting. Even then, Council would probably be drained after thoroughly analyzing even one of those issues. They knew that. They gambled with no backup plan. They lost. But what did Flo lose? Nothing. He still gets paid for showing up full-time three days a week and part-time Monday and Friday (who wouldn't love having Monday morning and Friday afternoon as paid time off every week?). The real losers are the employees and citizens who trusted these two to do their jobs effectively and trusted these two to not steal power from Council. Our form of government is appropriate for Marfa, but it depends on everybody doing their job correctly and not taking power that belongs to others.
Public service is about competence, sincerity, a touch of humility, and lots of hard work. In return, officials get respect, admiration and appreciation from the public. If money and power are the priorities, Marfa will suffer and citizens will pay the price.
- Amend the 05-06 budget to cover over expenditures
- Adopt the 06-07 budget after only one reading
- Raise property taxes after illegal notices
- Double the voluntary EMS charge on utility bills
- Contract with MISD to collect city taxes
- Review Marfa investment funds
- Borrow $115,000 from MNB
Wow! I have never seen such an important meeting. Every financial detail for the next year was delayed until the LAST POSSIBLE MINUTE and then shoved onto a single agenda on a rare Friday night meeting that was also Marfa's Homecoming. Remember, this was a special meeting so four of five councilmembers are required for a quorum. No backup date was possible; an all or nothing gamble. A very risky move for a council that has successfully met for less than two-thirds of its scheduled meetings.
Now, look at the agenda for the September 28th meeting the night before.
- Public hearing for the 06-07 budget
- Discuss MAC rental fees for chairs
- Discuss renting chairs to Chinati
- Nutrition center purchase of services
- Length of term for zoning board members
Huh? Is it just me or does the Thursday agenda look a little light in the flip flops? Thursday was a regular meeting that requires only three members and had a very high chance of quorum. With ALL the unfinished financial business, why was the city discussing chair rentals and zoning term limits? Why was council not spending every possible minute on finances? Why? Why? Why?
I was concerned about the looming crisis at the September 21st special meeting. I stood at the podium and gave council my opinion that they should meet every day during the last week of the year to make up for so many failed meetings over the last few months. I told them they should meet "Monday for 05-06 amendment, Tuesday for 06-07 budget, Wednesday for taxes, Thursday for the official budget hearing, and Friday for the tax vote." I had floated this idea with Lanman previously. He scoffed. Council ignored my advice on the 21st.
Here is my opinion about why everything was shoved to the last day and why Budget Officer Lanman did not want to discuss the situation during the regular Thursday meeting. He wanted to load-up the Friday meeting agenda and then use the busy schedule as a reason to limit citizen participation. Then he wanted to use the looming deadline as a way to stop council from giving the matter serious consideration. If council did not push everything through, it would reflect poorly on council. It was a strategic gamble to get every crooked financial deal he wanted. Wait to the last minute, stop citizen input, and limit council power. This is the corruption of David and Flo in manipulating council so that they cannot do an effective job at leading the city. The desire to go to the Homecoming game in a small West Texas town on Friday night probably never crossed their minds.
Look at their incompetence. They could have taken care of so much on Thursday. They could have discussed the 06-07 budget. We all knew it was not ready. Council had only discussed it once. The public hearing was silly. Council did not discuss anything, they just let some citizens present petitions with little comment. They did not go through the budget line by line. Then, and this is the best part, at the end of the public hearing they did EXACTLY NOTHING! State law requires them to act on the budget at the end of the hearing. Flawed as it was, all they needed was a motion, a second and a vote and they could have adopted the budget for next year. They sat flat on their chairs and stared off into space and closed the hearing with no action (which is against the law I will remind you).
With all the other important financial matters ahead of them, what was next on the agenda? CHAIR RENTAL RATES!!!!!! That's right. Who makes the agenda? David and Flo. Those two dim bulbs thought that the most important fiscal matter for council to consider on Thursday was CHAIR RENTAL RATES! They could have worked on the 05-06 budget amendment. They could have worked on the 06-07 budget in earnest. They could have handled the MISD tax collection, investment analysis and bank loan business. They had time, they had quorum. Instead, they rearranged the folding metal chairs on the Marfa Fiscal Titanic.
Flo had the nerve to tell Marfa that the 06-07 budget had a surplus large enough to pay for raises for everybody with him getting the largest raise. He did not tell us that he was counting on $26,000 from Operation Stone Garden and $46,000 from the gas company that he knew we will not get this year. He used that empty promise of a pay raise to try and bribe everyone into accepting his budget mess. Excuse me, if the city is so flush with cash, why are we borrowing $115,000 from the bank? We don't need empty promises backed up by borrowed money. We need competent management of the city. Then when the house of cards fell apart, those two start blaming others for employees not getting a raise. Pathetic.
Marfa is in a boom. Why are employees suffering? The elected officials and the city administrator have failed to lead and manage the city effectively. Council must take part of the blame. The administrator works for them. Council is the boss. Council can and should manage this employee. Unfortunately, Lanman and Sauceda have joined forces to take as much power from Council as possible. Council has been passive, too timid to stand up to the Mayor's power grab and too intimidated to rein in their rogue administrator. Why did Lanman and Sauceda not raise the issue of absent councilwoman Devine? Because Lanman likes a weak council and likes to cast the tie-breaking vote. And Sauceda likes $15,000 raises authorized by Lanman without Council approval.
Council is to blame for being so completely and totally passive about the agenda that they are being led like sheep by two wolves in sheep's clothing. They should take leadership on the agenda. The real maliciousness comes from David and Flo who control council by limiting the agenda. We saw it in spades during the building permit fiasco. Those two twin brothers from different mothers have been controlling council by controlling the agenda. Council can only act on what is on the agenda, and those two know it. Our elected councilmembers cannot manage the city until they take control of the agenda. Until then, the democratic process has been shanghaied by Lanman and Sauceda, and our elected Council has been neutralized.
Action for the tax hike could have been scheduled for Thursday, but they chose the last minute showdown at OK Corral of Friday night. If they did not finish business on Thursday, they could have continued on Friday. David and Flo did not want proper consideration of the financial matters. They wanted to ram it down the throat of council and citizens at the last minute so there would not be time to consider it seriously. The Friday schedule for the tax vote was set weeks earlier due to Truth In Taxation laws. The Thursday agenda was posted three days ahead as usual. Why was there nothing of substance on Thursday? Why was everything pushed to Friday?
Look at the 05-06 budget amendment. Flo blew his admin budget by $48,000 last year. Then he purchased a police car for $17,500 without absolutely no budget. Completely and totally unfunded and illegal. Flo knows what he is doing. He has been around the fiscal mismanagement block many times in other failed management jobs. He knows he should have brought the 05-06 budget to council early in the year when he saw city spending out of control. Instead, he doctored the budget on paper and in the computer to hide things and then waited until the last hour of the year to try and bury his wasteful spending. He hoped council would be so distracted by the 06-07 budget and the bank bailout and the tax fiasco that he could just slide his whitewash of a whiteout of a budgetary fiasco when they weren't able to look at it carefully. Why did we spend $17,000 more than budgeted for professional services if Flo can't even get good advice. With David's full support, Flo wanted to whitewash his budget failures for 05-06 at the last minute. Instead of giving council time to work on it and understand the complexity, he waited until the last day on a busy agenda knowing they would not have time to look at it. This is not an accident people. This is intentional abuse of the system to deprive council of the ability to manage the city's finances properly. This is not competence. This is full-on intentional conniving with city money by two calculating men intent on running the city's books themselves while limiting the power of council.
David Lanman and Florencio P. Sauceda calculated that a last-minute, last hour, last-day, last ditch attempt to overwhelm council with all the financial structure of the year in one meeting would succeed by numbing council. Each of those agenda items should have been the centerpiece of a full meeting. Even then, Council would probably be drained after thoroughly analyzing even one of those issues. They knew that. They gambled with no backup plan. They lost. But what did Flo lose? Nothing. He still gets paid for showing up full-time three days a week and part-time Monday and Friday (who wouldn't love having Monday morning and Friday afternoon as paid time off every week?). The real losers are the employees and citizens who trusted these two to do their jobs effectively and trusted these two to not steal power from Council. Our form of government is appropriate for Marfa, but it depends on everybody doing their job correctly and not taking power that belongs to others.
Public service is about competence, sincerity, a touch of humility, and lots of hard work. In return, officials get respect, admiration and appreciation from the public. If money and power are the priorities, Marfa will suffer and citizens will pay the price.
posted by RobC at 11:33 AM
3 Comments:
Has anybody had difficulty reading this post? One reader had old videos pasted over the text. I think I have fixed it. Did anybody else have trouble?
i could read it just fine but was wondering why no one had commented on it.
Flo & David are the ones responsible for the shape the city is in and please don't forget Oscar. Flo started with Oscar's and Dan's blessing. Remember? Stonegarden cannot generate any funds as the program is no longer in effect and there is no way the police department can generate $26,000. and the municipal court has their own thing going with Oscar and Flo plus David. Their intake does not count since most of the collections are paid to the state as court costs.
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